Warhead on the Forehead: The Explosive Power of Saying the Thing You're Most Afraid to Say in Therapy

Saturday May 24, 2025. Happy Memorial Day. This is for Shane, who will see me Monday after 1400. Thank you for your service.

James sat on the edge of the couch the way someone might perch on a landmine, unsure if shifting his weight would detonate something.

Across from him sat Dr. Gale, a woman who had the unshakable demeanor of a lighthouse—always steady, always blinking back, even when the waves got weird.

“So,” she said, gently. “You said last week there was something you were holding back.”

James nodded. His knee bounced like a hostage sending Morse code. He glanced at the tissue box, as if it might offer a distraction, or maybe a tactical shield.

“I feel like,” he started, “if I say this thing out loud, it’ll be like... like dropping a warhead right on my own forehead.”

Dr. Gale blinked. Not in surprise, but in recognition. “Go on.”

“I mean it,” he said. “It’s not just a little truth. It’s not like, ‘I’m afraid of confrontation’ or ‘I want to quit my job.’ It’s the thing that feels like the origin story of all my damage. Like if I say it out loud, my whole personality will get vaporized and all that’ll be left is the crater.”

She nodded. “You’ve been carrying around a psychological warhead. And it’s just been... aimed at yourself.”

James chuckled dryly. “I think it has my name engraved on it.”

There’s a moment in every real therapy process—somewhere between “I think we get along” and “you ruined my week, thanks”—where the client sits on something heavy. Not heavy like a couch. Heavy like uranium.

Therapists sometimes call it the unspeakable.

Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s tied to shame, to identity, to things that feel incompatible with being lovable. And often, saying it feels like it’ll break the room.

But here’s the thing.

It never does.

Back in the office, James took a breath like he was about to deep-sea dive.

Then he said the thing. Not the half-version or the sanitizing preamble. The thing.

Dr. Gale didn’t flinch. She leaned in. “That must’ve been so hard to carry alone.”

It was not a revolutionary statement. But it was something else entirely: non-explosive.

James blinked. “That’s it? You’re not... horrified?”

“You’ve been horrified enough for both of us,” she said. “What I see is someone brave enough to sit down and disarm a bomb.”

And that’s what happened. Not a bang. Not a crater. Not a fiery mushroom cloud of regret. Just... quiet.

The kind of quiet that follows an exhale you didn’t know you’d been holding for 15 years.

Later, James would describe it to her like this:

“It’s like I finally looked down and realized the warhead was made of cardboard. I was so sure it would destroy me. But all it did was collapse and leave behind a soft little puff of dust.”

Sometimes the most dangerous-seeming thought isn’t dangerous at all.

It’s just lonely.

It’s been locked in the basement too long, whispering that it’s too much, too awful, too radioactive.

But when it finally comes upstairs into the light, all it really wants is someone to sit next to it and say, “Yeah. That’s real. And you’re still whole.”

Going Meta

But the truth is, those warheads only explode when kept hidden. In the open, they often fizzle.

Every real breakthrough in therapy begins with that sentence that terrifies you the most.

So if you’re holding one, consider this your nudge:
You can say it.
You might even survive it.
Hell, you might be free.

Be Well. Stay Kind, and Godspeed.